vault backup: 2026-05-17 21:47:57

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Dimona.md

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
----
-category: "Nuclear Scientists & Programs"
+---
+category: "Military Installation"
 summary: "The Dimona facility, officially known as the Negev Nuclear Research Center, stands as a deeply clandestine and pivotal complex within Israel's national security apparatus, nestled in the arid Negev Desert south of Jerusalem."
 start: 1958
 location: "Negev Desert, Israel"

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Ilopango Airbase.md

@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ When Celerino Castillo's investigation began probing the hangars, the CIA sent a
 
 U.S. Ambassador Edwin Corr sent a secret "back channel" cable to the State Department requesting an internal DEA review of Castillo's allegations. The DEA informed Corr that Castillo's information was "totally inaccurate" and Castillo was told to close his investigation. When he continued, Corr personally ordered him to "stop the witch hunt." Three years later, when Castillo opened another investigation into drug trafficking at Hangar No. 5, the CIA refused to allow him on the base.[^1]
 
-[[Alan Fiers|Alan Fiers Jr.]], the former CIA official who headed the Contra program from 1984 to 1988, acknowledged: "We had a capability and indeed a responsibility for reporting what had been happening at Ilopango." The DEA later claimed under FOIA that it had no reports from Castillo about drug trafficking at Ilopango—a claim the Justice Department Inspector General exposed as false, having found and quoted from the reports liberally.[^1]
+[[Alan Fiers|Alan Fiers Jr.]], the former CIA official who headed the Contra program from 1984 to 1988, acknowledged: "We had a capability and indeed a responsibility for reporting what had been happening at Ilopango." The DEA later claimed under FOIA that it had no reports from Castillo about drug trafficking at Ilopango - a claim the Justice Department Inspector General exposed as false, having found and quoted from the reports liberally.[^1]
 
 ### Footnotes
 

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/JM-WAVE.md

@@ -39,13 +39,13 @@ Under Shackley, JM/WAVE operated extensive maritime raiding teams (the "cowboys,
 
 JM/WAVE's operational activities fell into several categories:
 
-**Maritime operations**: Small fast boats conducted raids on Cuban coastal installations, refineries, and shipping. The raids were intended to damage Cuba's economy and demonstrate the vulnerability of the Castro government, but their practical impact was limited.
+Maritime operations: Small fast boats conducted raids on Cuban coastal installations, refineries, and shipping. The raids were intended to damage Cuba's economy and demonstrate the vulnerability of the Castro government, but their practical impact was limited.
 
-**Intelligence collection**: Cuban refugees arriving in Miami were systematically debriefed; agent networks inside Cuba reported on military dispositions, economic conditions, and political developments; and aerial photography supplemented human intelligence.
+Intelligence collection: Cuban refugees arriving in Miami were systematically debriefed; agent networks inside Cuba reported on military dispositions, economic conditions, and political developments; and aerial photography supplemented human intelligence.
 
-**Exile organizational management**: The station provided funding and direction to multiple Cuban exile groups including the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FRD) and its successor the Cuban Revolutionary Council, Brigade 2506's survivors, and various smaller organizations. Managing competing exile factions and their political agendas within CIA operational requirements was a persistent challenge.
+Exile organizational management: The station provided funding and direction to multiple Cuban exile groups including the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FRD) and its successor the Cuban Revolutionary Council, Brigade 2506's survivors, and various smaller organizations. Managing competing exile factions and their political agendas within CIA operational requirements was a persistent challenge.
 
-**Assassination planning**: The CIA-organized crime assassination plots against Castro, run through [[Johnny Roselli]] and [[Sam Giancana]] by Harvey, were coordinated at least in part through JM/WAVE's Miami presence.[^1]
+Assassination planning: The CIA-organized crime assassination plots against Castro, run through [[Johnny Roselli]] and [[Sam Giancana]] by Harvey, were coordinated at least in part through JM/WAVE's Miami presence.[^1]
 
 ### Wind-Down
 

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Machons (Dimona Facilities).md

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ tags:
   - Concept
   - Nuclear Facility
   - Israel
-category: "Nuclear Scientists & Programs"
+category: "Military Installation"
 summary: "Machons are the numbered self-contained facility buildings within Israel's Dimona nuclear complex, whose functions including plutonium extraction and weapons component fabrication were publicly described by Mordechai Vanunu after his 1986 defection."
 location: Dimona, Negev Desert, Israel
 ---
@@ -15,11 +15,11 @@ Machon 1 is the large, silver-domed reactor, sixty feet in diameter, prominently
 
 ### Machon 2 (The Tunnel - Chemical Reprocessing Plant)
 
-Machon 2, informally known as the Tunnel, is the most essential and sensitive facility at [[Dimona]]. It is a six-level, highly automated chemical reprocessing plant, dug to a depth of eighty feet underground. Its surface appearance is that of an ordinary administration building—a nondescript, two-story, windowless structure, eighty by two hundred feet, containing a workers' canteen, shower rooms, offices, and warehouse space. The building features thickly reinforced walls, a safety measure given its location. A bank of elevators on the top floor was routinely bricked over before foreign visitors, such as American inspection teams led by [[Floyd L. Culler, Jr.]], were permitted to enter, effectively concealing the underground operations. No outsider is known to have ever entered the reprocessing plant itself.[^1]
+Machon 2, informally known as the Tunnel, is the most essential and sensitive facility at [[Dimona]]. It is a six-level, highly automated chemical reprocessing plant, dug to a depth of eighty feet underground. Its surface appearance is that of an ordinary administration building - a nondescript, two-story, windowless structure, eighty by two hundred feet, containing a workers' canteen, shower rooms, offices, and warehouse space. The building features thickly reinforced walls, a safety measure given its location. A bank of elevators on the top floor was routinely bricked over before foreign visitors, such as American inspection teams led by [[Floyd L. Culler, Jr.]], were permitted to enter, effectively concealing the underground operations. No outsider is known to have ever entered the reprocessing plant itself.[^1]
 
 Within Machon 2, plutonium, a by-product of the fission process in the reactor, is chemically extracted from spent uranium rods. These rods must first be cooled for weeks in water-filled tanks to reduce radioactivity by several thousand times before reprocessing can begin. Even then, the rods remain lethal and are handled exclusively by remote control from behind lead shielding. The production hall, where the spent uranium rods undergo reprocessing, dominates levels one through four underground. Work here is monitored from a large control room, which includes an observation area known to technicians as "Golda's Balcony," a reference to [[Golda Meir]]'s frequent visits after she became prime minister.[^1]
 
-According to Vanunu, the chemical processing results in a weekly average of nine "buttons" of pure plutonium, with a combined weight of 1.2 kilograms. The Tunnel operates around the clock for thirty-four weeks a year, shutting down from July to November for routine maintenance and repair. The reprocessing methods employed are described as routine, utilizing industrial solvents and solutions similar to those used at the Savannah River Plant in [[South Carolina]]. If Vanunu's reported production rate of 1.2 kilograms weekly is accurate, the reactor would need to operate at approximately 120 to 150 megawatts—more than five times its officially stated output—and consume nearly one hundred tons of uranium ore annually, producing enough enriched materials for four to a dozen or more bombs a year, depending on warhead design.[^1]
+According to Vanunu, the chemical processing results in a weekly average of nine "buttons" of pure plutonium, with a combined weight of 1.2 kilograms. The Tunnel operates around the clock for thirty-four weeks a year, shutting down from July to November for routine maintenance and repair. The reprocessing methods employed are described as routine, utilizing industrial solvents and solutions similar to those used at the Savannah River Plant in [[South Carolina]]. If Vanunu's reported production rate of 1.2 kilograms weekly is accurate, the reactor would need to operate at approximately 120 to 150 megawatts - more than five times its officially stated output - and consume nearly one hundred tons of uranium ore annually, producing enough enriched materials for four to a dozen or more bombs a year, depending on warhead design.[^1]
 
 ### Machon 3
 
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ This facility is equipped with a laser-isotope-reprocessing system, which is use
 
 ### Machon 10
 
-Machon 10 is where depleted uranium—uranium with very little or no uranium 235 remaining—is chemically isolated. This depleted uranium is then prepared for eventual shipment to the Israeli Defense Force or for sale to arms manufacturers in [[Europe]] and elsewhere, where it is used in the production of bullets, armor plating, and artillery and bomb shells.[^1]
+Machon 10 is where depleted uranium - uranium with very little or no uranium 235 remaining - is chemically isolated. This depleted uranium is then prepared for eventual shipment to the Israeli Defense Force or for sale to arms manufacturers in [[Europe]] and elsewhere, where it is used in the production of bullets, armor plating, and artillery and bomb shells.[^1]
 
 ### Warhead Fabrication and Assembly
 

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/USS Princeton.md

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ---
-category: "Intelligence & Government"
+category: "Military Installation"
 tags:
   - Military
   - UnitedStates
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ tags:
   - AATIP
 summary: "USS Princeton (CG-59) is a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser whose SPY-1B radar system tracked unidentified aerial objects during November 2004 training exercises off the California coast, producing the sensor data that corroborated the visual accounts of F/A-18 pilots in the Nimitz UAP encounter - the most technically documented unidentified aerial phenomenon case in U.S. military history."
 created: 2026-05-15
-updated: 2026-05-15
+updated: 2026-05-17
 location: "San Diego, California (homeport)"
 ---